White House Down arrives in November

9/11/2013 10:17:08 AM, by Guido Henkel
White House Down arrives in NovemberSony Pictures Home Entertainment has just announced to bring Roland Emmerich’s actioner White House Down to DVD and Blu-Ray Disc in November.
Capitol Policeman John Cale (Channing Tatum) has just been denied his dream job with the Secret Service of protecting President James Sawyer (Jamie Foxx). Not wanting to let down his little girl with the news, he takes her on a tour of the White House, when the complex is overtaken by a heavily armed paramilitary group. Now, with the nation's government falling into chaos and time running out, it's up to Cale to save the president, his daughter, and the country.
Beside the feature film, the DVD version will also contain four Featurettes, such as ”A Dynamic Duo,” taking a look at the chemistry between Tatum and Foxx and their dynamic on-screen presence. ”Men Of Action” allows you to discover Tatum’s willingness and desire to perform his own stunts, as well as the extensive training required, while ”Roland Emmerich: Upping The Ante” offers up a look at Roland Emmerich’s vision for the film. ”Meet The Insiders” will shine a spotlight on the star-studded supporting cast of the movie.
The Blu-Ray version will contain all of these bonus materials as well, of course, and will further add a Gag Reel to the mix, along with nine additional Featurettes. ”The Beast” is a look at the film’s presidential limo, better known as The Beast. ”The Full Arsenal” takes a closer look at the Guns,  Grenades, Tanks and Choppers, while ”VFX Boundaries Down” allows you to discover the technologies that were literally invented by filmmakers, from massive blue screens to virtual sets.
“The Inside Story” uncovers this concept’s fast-moving rise to the big screen, whereas ”Presidential Treatment” is a look at the size and scope of this massive production.
”Lights, Camera, Heart-Pumping Action” uncovers how filmmakers utilized a unique and stylistic approach to lighting, as well as various filming techniques to capture the true scope of the film’s immense action.
Then there is ”Crashing The Oval Office” allowing you to see how filmmakers constructed a stunt set then drove an SUV at full speed into the Oval Office. ”Drowning The Beast” analyzes the presidential limo escape, and finally, ”Recreating The White House” gives you a chance to hear from the filmmakers about the meticulous detail that went into replicating the White House.
“White House Down” arrives on November 5 and can be yours for $40.99 as a Blu-Ray/DVD and UltraViolet combo, or $30.99 on DVD. Secure your copy today at Amazon.com

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A Haunted House

A Haunted House is unapologetically crass. There are no boundaries it?s unwilling to cross and no subject matter it?s unwilling to mine for comedy. It?s aggressive, in your face and smelly. It?s the type of humor many people might disparagingly call ?lowest common denominator?, but really, that?s not entirely accurate. Many of the jokes in A Haunted House are of the easy, low hanging fruit variety, sure, but many others are also more clever sideswipes. Just because a laugh is grimy or dirty doesn?t mean it didn?t require creativity to write. Plus, it takes some balls to go there in a spoof movie.

Unlike a high percentage of spoof movies, A Haunted House is R-rated. That decision to go for the jugular will probably cost the film some money at the box office, but from a quality standpoint, it really helps the film differentiate itself and generate laughs. In fact, that no holds barred strategy is probably the movie?s biggest single asset. From anal rape to partner swapping to naked drug deals to lots and lots of four-letter word, A Haunted House doesn?t hold back, and given all the blandly offensive spoof films we?ve seen over the last decade, that?s actually refreshing. Unfortunately, all of those positives aren?t quite enough to qualify A Haunted House as a good movie. It?s more in the okay to the okay-minus file.

The film follows Malcolm (Marlon Wayans) and Kisha (Essence Atkins) as they move in together. He?s so excited about the big life transition that he buys a whole bunch of camera equipment to document their lives Paranormal Activity style, but, of course, it doesn?t work out as expected. She refuses to let him tape them having sex, and perhaps even more importantly, a ghost takes up residence in the house, acting like a perverted invisible monster that thrives off attention, negativity and weed in equal measure. Eventually, a psychic (Nick Swardson), an ex-con priest (Cedric The Entertainer), a security specialist (David Koechner) and his slow brother (Dave Sheridan) are hired to help ?unpossess? the house, but those efforts don?t exactly go as planned either.

There are quite a few laughs to be had during A Haunted House?s eighty-six minute runtime. As usual, Wayans has a certain charisma on screen, and the first person camera, documentary style footage actually lends itself to his talents. Most of the veteran comedic ringers the film brings in do their part to carry the action too, but the basic format still really runs out of gas. It feels 10 or 15 minutes too long, and it?s very clear scribes Wayans and Rick Alvarez had no idea how to wind up the plot. Most spoof movies share that same problem, but that doesn?t change the fact that it?s still awkward here, as are about twenty to thirty percent of the jokes that are just complete misfires.

A Haunted House isn?t funny enough or original enough to be fondly remembered for decades to come, but for those without a stick up their asses who are willing to be open-minded, it?s a funny enough kick to the ghost balls.

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House At The End Of The Street [Blu-ray]

As a horror-craving adolescent, I regularly watched midnight movies filled with sex and violence on USA's Up All Night with Gilbert Gottfried. The cult classics, B-movies and exploitation films I sneaked there were edited for TV with an eye toward including as much sex and violence as censors would allow, which often meant less salacious things--like plot points--were chopped out. This made the movies senseless, but that was part of the fun. Watching even the unrated version of the PG-13 rated horror thriller House at the End of the Street made me wistful for the low-budget garbage of my youth, because at least those offered me scintillating sex and violence with their nonsensical stories.

The Movie:

With a cast that includes two Oscar-nominated actresses (Elisabeth Shue and Jennifer Lawrence), you might expect House at the End of the Street to be smarter than your average horror movie. But even these rightly celebrated performers cannot save this movie from its total lack of tension, shockingly bad dialogue and tangle of incomprehensible plot points.

Lawrence stars as Elissa, a high school girl who has a strained relationship with her recently divorced mother (Shue) who has just transplanted the family into a seemingly nice and normal small town. Of course, all illusions of a peaceful suburban life are shattered when mother and daughter discover they live next to the home of a young man whose parents were brutally murdered by his mentally unstable sister four years ago. Since then, the killer teen, Carrie Anne, hasn't been spotted, but some assume she drowned after running off into the nearby woods. As Elissa grows closer to Carrie Anne's surviving brother, Ryan (Max Theirot), she begins to uncover the horrible?and absolutely confusing?truth.

Director Mark Tonderai goes for a slow burn style of scares and tension building, but fails miserably. For one thing, the roles are terribly miscast as both Shue and Lawrence seem too smart for the lies their characters readily fall for, and the movie's monsters are too gawky to be scary. Instead of slow burn, House at the End of the Street is just slow and boring, piling up awkward exposition lines that are about as subtle as the hammer Carrie Anne uses to pummel her parents to death in the film's opening.

Worse yet, characters' actions frequently lack motivation beyond the fact that the story needs them to behave the way they do. Plus, the dialogue is so on the nose that you might wonder if Elissa?who blurts out upon meeting Ryan the statement, "Your parents are dead"?has some sort of social interaction disorder. Aside from being an amusing way to link this movie to Lawrence's far more interesting outing in Silver Linings Playbook this behavior has no real payoff. It's just badly written dialogue courtesy of David Loucka, who also penned the deadly boring haunted house flick Dream House.

The script is also littered with plot holes that make the movie incoherent throughout and lead to a finale that steals from more menacing movies (which I won't identify lest I give away spoilers) and is wildly unsatisfying. If there were at least something titillating?be it gruesome gore or thrilling sex appeal?the formerly mentioned faults might be less egregious and maybe even overlooked. Similarly, I might forgive the distractingly bad sound design and wincingly amateurish lighting, but House at the End of the Street so lacks in thrills and entertainment that clocking it's faults became the most fun I had with it. The movie is flat, and lacking in scares, coherence, fun and engaging imagery. In the end, the scariest thing about this horror movie is that it was made at all.

The Disc:

The audio and visual on the Blu-ray is sharp. Plus, this version also comes with a DVD, and a digital copy easily accessible through iTunes. But the bonus feature that might seem most enticing is the Unrated cut of the movie that's proudly pronounced on the box art's cover. Unfortunately, where most unrated versions mean more nudity, gore, raunchy jokes or foul language, this unrated cut offers none of the above. There's a bit of blood but that's about it for carnage.

The Blu-ray also boasts a behind-the-scenes featurette called "Journey Into Terror: Inside House at the End of the Street." This has interviews with the cast and crew, and is most interesting in that it reveals that Tonderai set out to make a Hitchcock-style thriller that would be appropriate for younger audiences. If any younger audience members are reading this, let me assure you: the worst of Hitchcock is still 100 times better than House at the End of the Street.

Besides a theatrical trailer for the film, there's also a set of so-called "Sneak Peeks." These are trailers for other movies. It's fine that they are included, but calling them a special feature is ridiculous.

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Elisabeth Shue, Max ThieriotProduced by: Hal Lieberman, Peter Block, Aaron Ryder

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House At The End Of The Street

House At The End Of The Street isn?t a great horror movie, but it is a careful one. It consistently chooses the correct camera angles. It lets its characters interact like real human beings. It uses the weather to its advantage. It gives and withholds the right ratio of information. It makes the correct decision more often than not, and consequently, when all of those little moments are added up, they far outweigh the story problems that would have easily sunk most films in its position. Plus, having Jennifer Lawrence and Elisabeth Shue really helps.

Most of us learned a long time ago not to expect anything from performances in horror films. Maybe it?s the subject matter. Maybe it?s the self-fulfilling prophecy of low expectations. Whatever the reason, the acting in scary movies is bad far more often than it?s good, which is why it feels so refreshing to watch Lawrence and Shue offer their usual quality. Both women have been better in other things, but their mere solidness in House At The End Of The Street really helps to sell everything going on. They make us care about their characters? screams and care about their basic movements. They even convince us to care about their mother-daughter relationship.

That?s probably where the two women are most important Like all horror flicks, House is concerned with terror, but the lead-up to the fright fest is longer than usual. In less capable hands, the devoted time could have felt boring and wasted, but here, it feels honest and human. The relationship between mom Sarah (Shue) and daughter Elissa (Lawrence) has been fractured for a long time; so, in order to mend fences and start anew, they trade the hustle and bustle of Chicago for the stillness of a large house next to a national forest. Ordinarily, there?s no way they could afford such a property, but thanks to the odious mansion with a dark past next door, they?re able to move in.

The residence in question is occupied by part-time college student Ryan Jacobson (Max Theriot). When he was a kid, his mentally deranged sister murdered their parents and then escaped into the woods, sinking property values in a ten mile radius and forever cursing him to be the weirdo everyone in town is suspicious of. He just wants to be left alone, but Elissa has other ideas. She sees a sad little project she can fix, much to her mother?s chagrin.

You can make your own guesses as to how this set-up turns into a horror movie. No doubt the more astute among you could probably even come up with a better story arc than what actually unfolds from this point forward. There are definitely a few holes and question marks in what we?re given, but thanks to the solid character development we got early on and a great sense of scare timing from director Mark Tonderai, it?s still snappy, exciting and pretty satisfying.

House At The End Of The Street realizes scariness and creepiness are often proportional to how much we care about the character or characters in trouble. It takes great pains to present Elissa as a believable high school girl (at one point, she expresses an interest in using the term ?dickhole? more) and Sarah as a believable mother (she shoots some of the meanest death glares I?ve ever seen). By the end of the film, they feel like women we know. They feel like women we?d like to see the best for, and even as the plot hurdles out of control, we?re invested in the outcome. We care. That?s rare for a horror movie, and it?s as good of a reason to see a movie as any I can think of.

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Dream House

Bill Gibron is a veteran film critic from Tampa, Florida.Good news, film fans. The much debated trailer for this Jim Sheridan helmed thriller (more on that name in a moment) does not give away the big plot twist of this proposed fright fest. Indeed, there are actually three of said surprises during this tale of a man who may or may not be losing his mind. Will Atenton (Daniel Craig) has just left his job as an editor for a high powered publisher in order to spend more time in the country with his wife Libby (Rachel Weisz) and his two precocious daughters. Unfortunately, the title abode he just bought turns out to be the murder home of one Peter Ward, the scene of a grizzly triple homicide that left said the aforementioned's spouse and two young children dead, and their proposed killer institutionalized.
With the community giving him dirty looks and his nosy neighbor Ann Patterson (Naomi Watts) suggesting that Will knows more than he lets on, our hero starts to investigate just who this Peter Ward was/is. He believes the recently released inmate is now a threat to his loved ones. What Will finds out though is even more shocking. It seems that HE is Peter Ward, and that the persona of Will Atenton is just a psychological fugue state forced on him by his grief...and guilt. Naturally, Will/Peter doesn't believe any of this. He would never harm anyone, especially his wife and kids. Oddly enough, he may be right.

Rumor has it that Morgan Creek, the company behind Dream House, was so unhappy with the work of six time Oscar nominee Sheridan (of My Left Foot and In America fame) that they took the film away from him. The resulting studio mandated cut is now more or less disowned by everyone involved...and rightfully so. Dream House is dead - internally, externally, and scare-wise. It lacks the basics of the genre, suspense, surprise, and shocks, while continually finding contrivances and cliches that more or less destroy any potential dread. This is a film where the first 30 minutes reveal everything you need to know about the mystery of the next hour: the unknown crime scene; the odd reactions among the locals; the angry ex-husband from across the street; the parka wearing stranger that seems to be stalking Will. All that's left is for the audience to put the pieces together. Sadly, it's as simple as a kindergarten puzzle.

That's because the script - or what little was left of it - by David Louka (Eddie, The Dream Team) stinks. It's a series of set-ups that never lead to anything legitimate. Once the first twist arrives, we're glad it doesn't completely define the film, By the time we are well into the third, the nonsensical devices are aggravating. Let's face it, a lot of out of the ordinary things have to happen in order to keep the various narrative ruses going here. One Google search, carefully worded question, or a random comment from a teenager later and we'd have no movie.  

Since this is one of those disowned projects which never reflects the original intent of those involved, it's hard to see what Sheridan was up to. There are moments of mindless schmaltz and ghost whimsy that just don't belong here. Similarly, a series of dream sequences (featured heavily in the ad) end up meaning nothing. All the while, Craig shifts between an American and English accent while Weisz looks lost and lonely. Even Watts, whose more or less left with a cameo, barely registers. Indeed, Dream House is so mechanical, so meaningless in what it hopes to achieve, that it fails to leave much of an impression. Instead, it's minor macabre marred by a desire to cater to horror novices, not full-fledged fans.    

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EXCLUSIVE: The House of Fallen DVD Clip

Aug 25, 2011 by B. Alan Orange

The Watchers, a group of fallen angels, walk amongst the earth disguised as humans, torturing their vessels. In the hunt for prophetic truth, three strangers are put on trial for their past sins, and are forced to fight for survival in the face of an ancient evil. But in the war between heaven and hell, how do you kill what is already dead? Find out in House of Fallen, which made its DVD debut this Tuesday, August 23rd. We have an exclusive clip from this release, which you can check out below.

House of Fallen is available on DVD today!

House of Fallen was released August 23rd, 2011.

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DVD Review - The Lake House (2006)

If you are looking for a romantic story that shows an extremely independent woman and a very self-reliant man fall head over heels in love, even though they are literally out of sync with each other, The Lake House is a perfect movie for you to see. The story is set in the woodsy northern Illinois area of Lake Michigan, which makes a gorgeous background to watch two people try to sort out their demanding careers and lonely frustrating lives.

The film stars Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves, both former co-stars of the film Speed. This romance is actually a story retold from the Korean movie "Siworae". Masterfully directed by Alejandro Atresti, Lake House reveals a mystery centered on a typical looking mailbox right in front of a house on Lake Michigan that somehow is able to bridge time between these two strangers.

Long after she has moved away from her lakeside home, Bullock who plays a lonely physician, starts to write letters to Reeves, who plays a frustrated architect while he is living in the very same lakeside house. After exchanging a series of letters, they both eventually discover that they are living two years apart in time.

Through several life changing events in both of their lives, the two distant lovers can only share their joys, frustrations, humor, tragedies, and dreams by mail. As other lovers come and go, as parents pass away, and even as birthdays pass, they can still only share these life changing events over the years by mail. Life keeps throwing them twists and turns, causing even their best schemes to meet each other in person, to slip just beyond their reach, or in this case, time.

Sandra Bullock plays her role brilliantly as a hospital doctor with long hours at work and a cat to play chess with, with both relentless compassion and gentle humor. During the film, her life spans time in her life during an era in college, to when she has another boyfriend, and then during her time spent in her lonely, busy career as a physician.

Keanu Reeves has added his own finesse by portraying a very creative architect, living with the disapproval of his extremely well known and famous architect elderly father who has held his son back from building a business with his younger fellow architect brother. He yearns for someone to love, to share his creative dreams and his passion for life.

Although at first, neither the physician nor the architect particularly like one another, however as more letters get exchanged, they became increasingly involved with each other's life and develop a love for each other that only grows stronger as the years pass by.

The Lake House was made in 2006 and is rated PG for some strong language and disturbing images.

Tom Straub is a successful author, and webmaster of DVD Reviews web site, where you can see more of your favorite DVD movie releases and reviews.